The invention relates to safety harnesses, and more particularly, to a comfortable safety harness which may be removed quickly and which will not injure the user, such as a hunter, when it breaks a fall.
A hunter who hunts from a tree or a stand therein may normally situate himself 12 to 25 feet from the ground, depending on the particular tree, the terrain, the undergrowth, etc. in order to be hidden from nearby game. When a hunter is at this height, he faces great danger of sustaining serious injury in the event of a fall, a frequent occurrence among hunters. Such falls may occur from any of several causes, with or without warning, including the breaking of branches supporting the hunter, a strong wind, carelessness, or loss of consciousness.
Another problem encountered by hunters, particularly game hunters, is to drag heavy killed game, such as a deer, to an accessible road where it may be loaded onto a vehicle.
In order to protect the hunter against injury from a fall, a harness having a lifeline with a loop for gripping the tree may be worn. Such a harness could also assist in moving killed game by tieing the lifeline or a rope attached to the lifeline to the killed game so that it may be dragged along the ground with greater ease.
Safety harnesses, adapted for use by sailors, firemen, climbers, and workers utilizing scaffolds, are well known. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,699,284 (Rose, 1955), 2,979,028 (Zakely, 1961), 148,744 (Parent, 1874), 1,967,767 (Diez, 1934), 3,869,021 (Sutherland et al, 1974) and 634,604 (Asche, 1899). However, these prior art harnesses are not suitable for use by hunters as described above. For example, harnesses of the prior art do not include a lifeline suitable for gripping a tree.
Furthermore, even if modified by the inclusion of a lifeline suitable for gripping a tree, these devices would suffer from several disadvantages. Such devices generally comprise a waist strap or a chest strap or both and shoulder straps holding up the chest or waist strap. In such devices, a variety of types of buckles have been utilized for securing the straps around the user's body. If both a waist strap and a chest strap are included, they are generally joined together in fixed relationship with a vertical strap, as best shown in the Rose patent identified above. Such devices have several disadvantages: In the event of a fall, most of the force restraining the user will be exerted by only one strap, causing pain and possibly loss of breath or injury. After such a fall, the user may wish to release himself from the harness, particularly if no one is nearby to render assistance. However, the user will have great difficulty doing so with prior art devices, as the buckles thereof do not have quick release features and are particularly difficult to release under the tension exerted by the lifeline. Another disadvantage of the prior art devices is that because of the generally fixed relationships of the various straps, it is not possible to adjust the locations of the buckles on the waist or chest straps for comfort and easy access, in accordance with the size and preferences of the user. Prior safety harnesses are also disadvantageous for use by hunters as a means for dragging killed game. Since the various straps of prior harnesses do not connect to a single point, their construction does not permit the pulling pressure to be evenly distributed over a wide area of the user's body. Pulling game with such a harness is therefore also painful and tiring.